Tax revenues up 250 billion in three years? Wow that's hot, in the same time the deficit has been expanded by about oh a trillion and a half. I mean the increase in the tax revenue seems like it’s mostly from the revenue collected off the borrowed money. Power line can’t add apparently.

The only thing suprising about this is that there are still shit-wits out there that will make the claim that the 70 or 80 billion in tax cuts have had more of an impact then the trillion + in borrowed money that has been dumped into the economy over the last few years. What happens if they tried to ... oh I don’t know, balance the budget? Can you say tank the economy?

Yeah but the lugubrious tone!

You can hear the French announcer saying "Why?! Why?!" as it happens........

Scores for Materazzi: 5.9, 6.0, 5.1 (from the Soviet judge), 5.9.

I don't think the physics are right - a head-butt to the sternum shouldn't result in a double-de-cleating knockdown.

A head-butt, when done right, can be pretty painful to the recipient. But of course soccer players exaggerate everything, so it's hard to know what's what.

Eh Pourquoi, Eh Pourquoi? POURQUOI? POURQUOI?

Considering that about half the Italian team is about to be arrested, I'm glad that they were able to have fun. I'm proud that you have been able to take a minor interest in 'surrenderball' over the past few weeks. Small steps.

I could understand him staggering backwards. I could even see him falling down afterwards. But the ballistics of his 'fall' are more consistent with his head intersecting the trajectory of a large-caliber round. Which of course didn't happen, because he still *had* a head afterwards...

And Foster, I thought I heard one of the talking heads say that none of the players were implicated in the match-fixing; it was only team officials and referees.

If you had seen that same guy headbutt the ball toward the goal a few minutes/moments earlier, you would have well-believed that his head-to-a-chest would knock a guy down.

Pshaw. Let's introduce these guys to Brian Urlacher.

I saw the header I think you're referring to, and it seemed like most of the energy for it came from the guy who fed Zidane the pass.

Now if Zidane could do the same thing with a stationary ball (like off a tee-ball tee), *that* would impress the hell out of me.

Oh my, Rick. First, before calling the Powerline guys innumerate you might want make sure you understand the difference between the numbers 1 and 3. Tax revenues increased $250 billion in the past year not the past three years. Second, the increase in tax revenues is almost entirely from increases in personal income and corporate taxes. US taxpayers made more money for the government to tax. Third, the borrowed money is not "dumped into the economy" and the government certainly doesn't collect any revenue from it. When there's a deficit, investors purchase federal debt at interest. The government borrows money and annually pays the interest on the debt they've incurred. Expenses, not revenues. Fourth, an increased deficit is not necessarily bad any more than an increase in personal debt is always bad.

Let's say I made $40,000 one year and had $10,000 in debt. The next year I make $50,000 and have $12,500 in debt. That's a 25 percent increase in my debt in a single year, but since my income increased at the same rate who cares? I still only owe 25 percent of my annual income. In general, the higher the income the easier it is carry a given level of debt so I'd usually be better off financially even if my debt increased a little bit as a percentage of my income.

What matters with the deficit is that it doesn't go up too quickly as a percentage of federal revenues or as a percentage of GDP and it's been at about the same percentage on both counts for the past 15 years. Our current national debt has no more impact on our economy than it did when Clinton was president. The only difference is that a decade ago the NYT wasn't desperately grasping at irrelevant economic numbers to slant as negatives for Clinton.

:Pshaw. Let's introduce these guys to Brian Urlacher."

No shit, what a bunch of fucking pussies. Zildane is damn standing still when he butts him. They should make them wear skirts.

I don't think they're necessarily pussies. I think they act like pussies when there's advantage to be gained from it, which may actually be worse.

Columnist Greg Baum, writing for The Age, pointed out that players almost never go down after blocking a shot, when it probably really really hurts.

entirely from increases in personal income and corporate taxes.

Bullshit, the deficit spending was five to ten times the amount of the so-called tax cut; the "cut" simply went to fund the deficit spending. To say that the impact of 60 billion a year in tax cuts had more of an impact on the economy then close to a half a trillion dollars in deficit spending is naive at best. If personal and corporate revenues are up it’s because of the largess of government spending

Also, we are only a few billion a year above where we started in 2000 and the difference doesn’t take inflation into account. My god this is one of the weakest recoveries coming out of one of the weakest recessions in the post war economy and it was fueled by deficit spending since all the tax cut meant is that the government had to borrow more money.

Sorry, Rick, but discretionary government spending makes up doesn't make up nearly enough of our economy to explain the magnitude of the narrowing deficit.

If you believe otherwise, show us your numbers.

players almost never go down after blocking a shot

Yeah, they save that for the locker room.

I think they act like pussies when there's advantage to be gained from it...

They should make them wear mini-skirts and stilletto heels. They wouldn't have to fake falling over all the damn time.

"I don't fall down. That son of a bitch knocked me
over."

I'm just going to say a few things, Rick:

1. If you've ever taken an economics course you should go back and demand they refund your tuition.

2. The US economy grew by about 4 trillion dollars between 2000 and 2005. Last year Japan's economy, the third largest in the world, was about 4 trillion dollars. The US federal budget and US federal revenues were nearly 1 trillion larger in 2005 than in 2000. Even with 9/11 and the .com bust the percentage of GDP growth in Bush's first five years is slightly better than the growth in Clinton's first five. If that's a weak recovery then I guess there's just no impressing some people.

3. Deficits have no short-run effect on the economy and even if they did a few hundred billion is far too small to have any effect. It's like claiming that a guy making $100,000 would go bankrupt if he had a $500/month car payment.